darted away. “Come now, that isn’t fair. I can’t rightly say…”
“Then wrongly say!” she spat. “You’re afraid I might, what, sneak into your rooms and murder you in your sleep?”
“Not afraid, per se. I just felt it necessary to maintain a certain amount of distance.”
“Ugh!” Picking up her skirts, she fled around the fountain, hurtling herself toward the door. It was all too much. The scandal, his revelations, confessions, hypocrisy, and concessions. Every emotion she’d ever named swirled within her until she felt as though she might detonate into a million plumes of volcanic ash. “I can’t look at you.”
His footsteps followed her. “Where do you think you are going?”
“To Trenwyth’s.”
“Wait.” He seized her wrist, his grip careful but firm. “It’s not safe. I thought we’d agreed you weren’t—”
“You agreed!” She whirled on him, turning the full force of a mounting rage against him. “You’ve done nothing but make decisions for me since the beginning. And I’ve been so solicitous, haven’t I? Because I needed to be grateful. Because I needed you to trust me. To help me. To save me. Because something awoke in me the night we met, and I fell a little in love with you then. The very moment I landed in your arms.” She swiped at angry new tears as she twisted her wrist out of his grasp.
“But you’ve taught me that love is not possible without trust, and trust is not possible without proof, so…” She made a frustrated gesture before returning her hands to clench at her sides. “Here we are. I’m leaving now so you can be about your work. Go, Chief Inspector Carlton Morley, go find my measure.”
“Prudence—” He lifted his hands, but she swept away from his reach.
“Don’t,” was all she said as she retreated through the door to escape in a hansom.
He didn’t.
Chapter 16
I fell a little in love with you.
Her words haunted Morley as he followed Pru’s hackney to the Duke of Trenwyth’s spectacular white stone Belgravia mansion, and watched from a discreet distance as she went inside. They plagued him for several restless hours as he endeavored to focus on something, anything else. No amount of training, paperwork, reading, or investigation could silence the admission.
In love.
Every document he examined blurred beneath the image of the abysmal wells of pain in her eyes. The wounded expression that’d precipitated her anger. Wounds he’d carelessly, selfishly inflicted.
What a fool he’d been, having such a conversation after the disaster with the article. She was disconsolate, and he’d been awash in his own recollected grief and loss to handle that moment with the aplomb it had called for. He’d spoken in haste and had said every wrong thing he possibly could have.
If marriage had a dunce cap, he’d be in the corner for weeks, his nose against the wall.
Agitated, he attempted any number of pastimes, wishing to calm the need to crawl out of his own skin. Crawl on his knees to her and beg her forgiveness.
He watched every minute go by, aching for her to return. Wishing she’d not sought comfort elsewhere, but also recognizing her need for a separation from him.
She was in one of the safest places in the city apart from home, among the wives of the most dangerous and protective men he could think of besides himself.
An eternal evening gave way to nightfall, and when he could stand it no longer, Morley punched his fists into the sleeves of his jacket, and struck out on foot toward Belgravia, keeping his eye on the traffic for her.
Trenwyth’s imposing house was ablaze with light as Morley chanced to meet his prodigal best mate striding up the walk for, presumably, the same reason. To escort his Countess home.
Ash, Lord Southbourne, put his cane to his hat and saluted him with a piratical grin. “Look at us, Morley,” he commiserated with a devilish tone. “As boys, did you ever in a million years dream we’d claim the West End as our neighborhood, casually fetching our high-born wives to take back to our manor houses to swive them like the common perverts we are?”
“Never in a million years.” Morley couldn’t even bring himself to pretend to enjoy the Earl of Southbourne’s charismatic irreverence. He very much doubted this night would go in that direction with his own high-born wife.
He didn’t merit it.
“I saw the papers today, Cutter,” Ash said, sweeping him with an observant look bordering with as much filial concern as the shark-eyed pirate could muster. “How is she? How goes